Part 9
It is strange how he always tries to show that he knows just a little bit better than any one else; if, for instance, I asked him if Montevideo wasn’t in 34° 50′ south, he would be certain to reply, “No; 34° 55′,” on which occasions the mate usually gazes in wonder at him, and then smiles gently at us, as though to say, “You see, you can’t teach him.”
Ahead of us, distant from fifty to two hundred miles, lie a number of shoal spots, called the Royal Charlotte, David Scott, Hotspur, Busbridge, Victoria, and Fly Banks. There are more than twenty fathoms on all of them, though, except on a certain unnamed shoal, thirty miles south-southeast of the Fly Bank, on which the ship “Professor Airy” struck in 1875. I wonder whether the water is discolored on these spots? It would be rather strange to come suddenly upon a stretch of green sea surrounded on all sides by water of the darkest blue.
In a copy of _Harper’s Round Table_ on board I found an amusing article called “A Yankee Skipper’s Trick,” which seemed good enough to transcribe, so here it is: “A good anecdote is told illustrating the superior enterprise of the Yankee skippers years ago. The New Bedford whalers left port for many a long voyage, sometimes to the far north, at other times to the far south. These intrepid followers of the sea sought and pursued the whale into the ice-clad latitudes about the poles with a natural fearlessness. A squadron sent out by Russia to explore the south seas, and reach the pole if possible, had attained a degree of latitude which the commodore proudly told himself had never been reached before by white man or other human beings. While he reflected upon the fame which would surely embellish his name, his sailors cried, ‘Land ho!’ Off to the south he descried a long, low-lying bit of land, and hastened to shape his course to reach it, there to plant the Russian standard on its highest point, claiming it in the name of His Majesty.
“What was his disgust and astonishment when, as his vessel approached the shore, he observed, over a bit of headland, a flag fluttering from a mast-head. In a few minutes a little schooner poked her nose around the point and came sailing smartly over the waves towards his vessel. The lean, Yankee captain, who was standing in the rigging as the schooner came up in the wind, yelled,--
“‘Ahoy there! What ship is that?’
“‘His Majesty’s ship the ----.’
“‘Well, this is the ‘Nantucket’ from Massachusetts. We’re doing a little piloting in these latitudes, and if you want to run in the cove yonder, why, we’ll pilot you in for a small charge.’
“The commodore’s disgust caused him to square his yards and shape his course to Russia.” Latitude, 16° 11′ south; longitude, 37° 15′ west.
+June 17+
I don’t expect that we will weather the Abrolhoses after all; we might be able to scrape along, but that would be taking chances, which Captain Scruggs never does. The chief danger in holding on to this course would be that of drifting foul of the reefs which stud the ocean in the vicinity of these islands. Therefore at eight o’clock this evening we will go around on the other tack, and it is to be hoped that we’ll do better than we did yesterday, with only ninety miles of latitude to our credit. This day was even finer than its predecessor, and we had some very grand cloud scenery, the eastern horizon being covered at five in the afternoon with great cirro-cumulus clouds in which we could perceive a number of bright luminous spots on the sea-line, called by sailors “sun-dogs”; being the bases of brilliant rainbows whose arches were concealed by the heavy clouds, producing a strange appearance.
The carpenter is now engaged in hewing out a new maintop-gallant-yard, a slow but interesting piece of work. The old one is weak and may not withstand the heavy weather of Cape Horn, and the maintop-gallant-sail is a very important one. It is as well to observe here, that whenever anything carries away aboard of this ship it is never spliced and forced to do further duty, as is the case on many vessels; the sheet, clew-line, or whatever has parted, is at once unrove, and a brand-new rope takes its place. The first illustration which we had of this was one morning in the Doldrums, when the maintop-gallant-stay-sail-halliards parted with a crack, and the half-dozen men on the end of it, among whom was myself, went down in a heap. Without a word a new piece of manila was rove in its place; and the same thing happened to the spanker-sheet a few nights ago. Indeed, this is one of the distinguishing marks of a Yankee ship. You will rarely find a piece of old running-gear aboard of a square-rigger flying the stars and stripes.
Late yesterday afternoon we caught another dolphin, a small one, weighing about fifteen pounds. He showed none of the splendid blues of our first fish, though the yellows and greens were very fine. Indeed, this dolphin, as he was towed through the water under the counter, resembled nothing so much as a strip of gorgeous, glittering satin, particularly whenever, as the fish rose slightly above the surface, a glossy sheen irradiated his lithe, elegant body. And immediately afterward we captured a bonito, about as large as a bluefish.
And now we have come to the first piece of inhumanity or gross cruelty of which either of us has been a witness on board. What we saw before was not much out of the way, except in regard to the bad language and the general atmosphere of “toughness” that pervaded the encounters; but even they were nothing to speak of when the character of the mates on American sailing ships is taken into consideration. That which I saw this afternoon, though, went far beyond hazing, for it assumed the form of full-fledged brutality. I want to begin at the commencement, so as to bring the whole affair to light and allow the reader to judge for himself.
The actors in the little drama which just escaped being a tragedy were Mr. Rarx and the Finn, Karl Karlsen. This fellow is slow and thick-headed, with a very hazy idea of English, but is always one of the first to jump if he understands the order. He was told this afternoon at about three o’clock to overhaul a certain tackle, one block of which was belayed to a pin in the rail, while the second mate stood by, having in his hand another massive block of a threefold purchase. The captain was below asleep, and I was standing at the forward end of the poop, not twenty feet from Karl. Suddenly Mr. Rarx, who was in a very bad humor, as I could see, walked close up to Karl and picked up a small coil of rope from the deck, and yelling, “You ain’t doin’ that right, d---- you,” made as though he were going to hit him. The man at once set about the job in another way; but the second mate’s temper was so ungovernable that he stepped up to Karl with an expression in his eyes which I never saw before in any man’s, gave him a terrific kick with his “letter-carrier” boots, and as the luckless fellow swung round under the shock and impetus, Rarx drew back the ponderous block which he still held, and which must have weighed nearly fifteen pounds, and flung it full against the sailor’s face. I could hear the thud distinctly, while with a sharp cry the big, powerful man reeled across the deck and would have fallen prone had it not been for the main fife-rail, against which he sunk gradually down, the blood pouring from a wide gash in his nose and forehead, and rapidly forming a little pond on the deck, while a crimson track stretched from where he crouched to the second mate, who stood over by the rail with the block raised above his head, as though challenging any other of the men hard by to take up the row. Half the watch saw the affair, and if looks could have annihilated him, Rarx would have dropped dead on the spot; and I saw Broadhead and the Frenchman, who were putting an eye-splice into the end of a wire rope, flush crimson and bend hard over their work at this miserable act of cruelty.
Meanwhile Karl remained where he fell, groaning, trying to stop the flow of blood which was rapidly saturating his clothes; why the block didn’t crack his head like a walnut will ever remain a mystery to me; it would have broken the skull of any one but a Russian seaman. For some few minutes there was a dead silence fore and aft; then Rarx walked up to Karl, shook him heavily, and cried, “Now, then, get away out o’ this, you ---- ---- ----; fine mess you’ve made on the deck. Go wipe the blood out o’ yer eyes, and bring a swab and get this out the deck, _and don’t you be long about it, neither_.” It struck me that this was rather hard lines, having to mop up your own blood; but in a few minutes more Karl recovered enough to totter forward, and when he next appeared he had a bucket of sand and water and a broom, and at the end of half an hour no trace of the assault remained save a large gloomy stain, which will have to wear out.
Later in the evening I remarked to MacFoy that this was the most villanous and unprovoked piece of brutality that I ever imagined, and that it was astonishing that a man who appeared to be such a well-principled fellow as Rarx would do such a thing. “Well-principled, is it? Huh,” was David’s comment; “peaceable enough to you aft I guess, but you’d think different if you could see him dark nights on the main-deck wearin’ ship. Did you ever see a Yankee second mate that wasn’t a hound?” “I don’t know very much about them personally,” I answered, “but they certainly have a hard name; the only other American second mate whom I ever knew was on a foreign ship, where he had to treat the sailors like men.” “Oh,” said MacFoy, “what do you think o’ what you saw this afternoon?” “Well, about the only thing anybody could say about it is that it was damnable,” I answered. Here the bosun looked steadily at me and said, “If you’d seen what I have in these ships for four years you’d think no more o’ that than steppin’ on a cockroach.”
At any rate, I’ll never forget the scene at the instant before the block struck Karl’s face: about half the watch in the rigging looking angrily down, the clumsy form of the Russian spinning round from the kick, and the second mate standing over him, red with anger, in the act of swinging the block well back to gather force for the blow. And this is what is known as “discipline” in Yankee deep-water men! Well, my only comment is, thank God that my wife wasn’t on deck to see it. Latitude, 17° 45′ south; longitude, 38° 5′ west.
+June 18+
No one to-day made the least allusion to yesterday’s sinister deed until this evening; Mr. Rarx was as bland as usual, and after supper all that the skipper said was, “They tell me the second mate had a little fun yesterday.” This indifference served to corroborate the bosun’s remark about what he had seen in Yankee ships. I think that the skipper wanted me to express my opinion and then he was going to tell me his in a loud voice before the men; but I asked him if there wasn’t a ship over to leeward, pointing abaft the beam; it served the purpose very well, for he fetched up his lumbering, prehistoric telescope and passed five minutes or so in looking for a vessel which wasn’t there, so that he forgot all about Rarx and the Finn.
To our great astonishment we were enabled by a little shift of wind to fetch by the Abrolhos Islands and to keep on, as we were on the port tack. It was a matter of great satisfaction to us all, and it put the captain in quite a radiant humor. The wind has been pretty well from the eastward of late, and even if it hasn’t been very strong, it enabled us for the first time in many days to round in the weather-braces and take advantage of what there was. Last night was exactly like the weather during a summer northeaster on the New England coast, one of those disagreeable spells which occur two or three times in July and August that fill the hearts of the hotel proprietors with dismay. A dense drizzle, increasing at times to heavy showers, prevailed throughout the night, accompanied by a mist which concealed everything one hundred yards away; while at times we had short but severe puffs of wind, for which we had to stow the sky-sails. At 9.30 in the evening a very strong breeze came out of the east; and, increasing, the second mate, whose watch it was, went forward to haul down the jib-topsail. So he left us on the poop in a heavy shower, and in a few minutes we heard some sharp slatting, but paid no attention to it, supposing that the jib-topsail-sheet had got adrift. Presently Mr. Rarx came back breathing heavily, and remarked, “Very funny; I don’t see how that sail could go like that.” “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Wrong? Why, the main-top-gallant-stay-s’l’s clean gone out the bolt-ropes, and in a minute we’ll have the old man up here tellin’ me ’twas my fault.”
Sure enough, in a few moments the captain’s bushy face arose through the companion-way, and he said without preliminary, “I suppose that was the main-t’-gallant-stay-s’l that went, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Mr. Rarx, meekly, “I was----”
“I suppose you were going to say that you was about to haul it down; well, you needn’t bother to explain; if you hadn’t had it too flat ’twouldn’t have went; thirty years ago, men didn’t sign as second mate till they knew how to trim a sail.”
The blighting sarcasm with which he said this put the second mate’s temper on edge again, and I expect that he’ll store this up against the skipper for possible future use, for he is unquestionably a fine sailor-man.
It is rather remarkable that we have caught no fish lately, as the sea in the vicinity of the Abrolhos Islands is the greatest fishing-ground on the whole Brazilian seaboard. For twenty-four hours now we have been on soundings with an average depth of forty fathoms; and while the water is of a dirty green color, it is wonderfully phosphorescent, though not quite equalling the water on the equator; still, when the patent log was hauled in last evening at eight o’clock (it hung up and down at that hour), the line was a rope of fire, dripping with silver sparks, and long after it had been coiled away over a pin it continued to emit brilliant flashes of phosphoric light.
Our new main-topgallant-yard is coming along nicely. It is being trimmed down from one of the double top-gallant-yards which the ship used to carry; this is a rather remarkable fact, that if a vessel carries double top-gallant-sails the yards will be larger in every way than if they were single. It would be hard to conceive a more gnome-like appearance than that presented by the carpenter to-day as he was hewing at the spar with an adze, seen from a distance of about one hundred feet; nearer, the illusion vanished. But his tall, peaked felt hat, immensely broad face, open dungaree-jumper which refused to meet over his globular person, and short, fat legs, lent him, when he rested on his adze with wide-spread feet, a wonderfully elfin aspect.
In a squall this morning I noticed that the mate wore for the first time a tremendously thick garment of red cloth, which he called a llama coat, being made of the wool or hair of that quadruped. It looked something like a flannel shirt, but was not split up the sides, and seemed to be as thick as a felt slipper. Mr. Goggins says that he has never yet seen the rain which can penetrate it. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is the fact that he has worn it for fifteen years and intends to wear it fifteen more. How sailors hate oil-skins! Their aversion to them is universal, and seems to be unreasonable. The captain, for instance, has several ancient, heavy suits which he calls his Cape Horn clothes. Whenever his presence is required for any length of time in a heavy rain, he dons one of these suits and goes on deck in a soft felt hat and a pair of slippers, only to return in fifteen or twenty minutes with dripping garments, his slippers sobbing at every step; in two minutes, though, he is arrayed in another suit, with the same foot-gear, and marches on deck again to repeat this operation as long as his dry clothes hold out. All this for dislike of oil-skins and boots. Latitude, 19° 56′ south; longitude, 38° 15′ west.
+June 19+
Rio is said to possess a superb climate in the winter months; but if it is finer than the weather which we are having now it must be supernaturally beautiful. For twenty-four hours we have run before a fresh northeast breeze, the only fault to be found with which is the fact that, as we are now dead before the wind, the after-sails are the only ones which draw, blanketing the others. The course this morning was given to the quartermaster, southwest, which will not be altered except in case of necessity till we have passed the Falklands. No mention has been made, by the way, of our helmsmen, dignified by the name of quartermasters. They do not really hold this rank, as they are merely sailors who have been picked out by the mates as the best helmsmen, and receive no more wages than able seamen. The idea of this is to have only certain men to steer the ship, that they may thoroughly understand her under all circumstances. It is curious to see how much less tanned these men are than the others, owing to the protection of the wheel-house.
The old mate continues to crawl growlingly about the decks, grumbling at various actual and phantasmagorical afflictions. His mode of progression is a sort of creeping prowl, as he thrusts his face into every nook and cranny, with a hundred wrinkles in his great, flabby nose, as though he were continuously assailed with disagreeable odors. He hazes the men a great deal more than the second mate does, though I do not think that he is particularly courageous; a flock of Gogginses might, like jackals, prove dangerous, but singly, his valor I’m sure would dwindle at close quarters. Being a poor seaman, the men have no respect at all for him, and in the presence of the skipper he bawls at the sailors and makes a feint of hitting them, glancing at the old man for approval, as he rolls about, exhorting them in his most rasping voice to “Come now, git a move on.”
Mr. Rarx gets several times more work out of his watch, for he knows how to handle the men; and as he has recovered his equanimity he continues to exhibit his claims to being a humorist. His men were hoisting the yards up taut in the second dog-watch yesterday, and when they came to the maintop-gallant-halliards, they burst into a fine chanty, “Whiskey”; then when they had finished with the main-yards they began on the foretop-gallant-halliards, but without a song. The yard seemed to stick a bit; and as sailors can always do twice the work with the inspiration of a song, Mr. Rarx called out, “Give us a little more of that whiskey, fellows”; which so tickled the fellows’ fancies that some of them shook in their extremity of mirth, though a sailor must always laugh at a mate’s joke. If the second mate were not such a bad-tempered man he would not be an unpleasant companion, for he talks well and is always very neat; but his recent villanous deed deprives his conversation of most of its erstwhile attractions, while he appears to think absolutely nothing of it.
Louis Jacquin is indisputably the best sailor in the forecastle, though young Broadhead, the New Yorker, is by no means a bad second. Louis’s marlinspike seamanship is really beautiful; and it turns out, as I expected, that he has served a long period in the French navy. Strange how sailors shift back and forth from man-of-war to merchantman. This man has good principles, too; for when the little bosun Rumps began to blackguard the skipper the other day, saying, “I’d like to have a crack at you ashore,” looking up at the poop, the Frenchman said, “Zat ees not right”; nor was this intended for me to hear. Louis made a queer mistake the other day. He was telling Broadhead about the attractions of Paris, and finally asked him, “Have you evair seen Père la Chère?” “What’s that?” said Broadhead. “Père la Chère, zee cemetarie,” answered Jacquin. It was an odd mistake for a Frenchman to make.
The captain is in fine feather now that we are doing well, but is annoyed that we do not meet more steamers. I never saw a skipper so anxious to be spoken and reported as Captain Scruggs; and last evening when a large steamer passed us bound south, probably to Rio, he almost wept because it was dark.
One of our two cabin cats has vanished; it was the “coon-cat,” and after a long search to-day we were forced to the belief that it has fallen overboard. It is hard luck, and its companion, the Maltese, is inconsolable. The captain seems really cut up about it, for he has all a sailor’s fancy for animals. One of Mr. Goggins’s traits, however, is his cruelty to the poor, ugly alley-cat which belongs to him,--another illustration of the sort of creature that he is. Latitude, 22° 30′ south; longitude, 39° 25′ west.
+June 20+
At nine o’clock this morning I sighted a vessel’s upper canvas ahead, far down in the southwest; she seemed to be a bark, and as such I reported her to the skipper. The breeze was from the eastward and blowing fresh, so that every sail was drawing to the utmost, and we were doing nearly eleven knots at the time. Slowly we drew up on the vessel, slowly but certainly, and at eleven o’clock she proved to be a ship, and we concluded that she was one of the Englishmen which sailed a week ahead of us: the “Balclutha,” from London, the “Merioneth,” from Swansea, and the “Peleus,” from Hamburg, all bound to San Francisco, and the “Annesley,” from Cardiff for Portland, Oregon. It was quite probable that we would fall in with each other hereabouts. In spite of the power of our glasses, however, it was impossible to tell for a long while whether she was a Yankee or a Britisher, until all at once she yawed, when the sun reflected from her sails showed that they were of cotton, so that the chances were in favor of her hailing from the States. We paid no further attention to her, though, till after dinner, when, by that time having raised her hull out of the water, we perceived that she carried a stunsail on the starboard side! Here was a spectacle as unusual as a blue moon in these days of scanty rigs and short crews! Still, in spite of her extra cloths, we overhauled her, and soon made the additional discovery that, like ourselves, she crossed three sky-sail-yards. (What a graceful, slender look they give to a vessel!) Captain Scruggs at this instant emerged from the cabin with his ancient, feeble-looking, clattering, brass telescope under his arm, levelled it at the flying stranger, bracing the long, tottering tubes against the top-gallant-backstays, gazed at her for a full minute, and announced her name,--the “Judas Dowes.” Now, this vessel sailed from New York for San Diego six days before we did, and though she has a fine record as a fast sailer, lo! we have overhauled her on the fortieth day. I am under the impression that Captains Scruggs and Platt had a wager as to who would pass the equator first; and as the “Dowes” undoubtedly crossed ahead of us, our skipper was in quite a bad humor when he found who the stranger was. We asked him if he couldn’t be mistaken, to which he disdainfully answered, “Mistaken? Of course not; wasn’t I master of her four years before I took the ‘Hosea Higgins’?” “Does Platt recognize us, do you suppose?” I asked him then. “Most certainly he does,” testily replied the captain; “who wouldn’t know them upper topsails?” And in truth the “Higgins” could be picked out among a score of other vessels simply by her long topmasts. There is every prospect of passing the “Judas Dowes” in the night, for at the moment, 4 +P.M.+, we cannot be more than seven or eight miles apart.